The Son Always Rises, but the Daughter Sleeps In: A tale of OPB*

Friday, September 08, 2006

Crosswalk Tales

Kaylee and I took a walk to the nearly picturesque Porter Square. The parking lot is significantly smaller than it needs to be so people loop around a lot looking for spots.

I was pushing Kaylee's stroller into a crosswalk right behind a navy blue Olds Cutlass when the damn thing starts backing up! I yanked the stroller diagonally out of the way screaming "STOP! What the fuck is the matter with you!"

Then the window rolls down and I'm expecting some Neanderthal with an unintelligible Boston accent when the face at the wheel is a ringer for the rapping grandmother from the Wedding Singer. She is holding her heart and seeing her life flash before her as she process the fact that she almost backed her Olds into a baby carriage. Kaylee was at her cutest grinning and making faces at her.

"I'm so sorry! It's just so hard to park here." She apologized in horror.

My God. I just screamed at a sweet old lady. I'm going straight to Hell. I tried to apologize to her but she wouldn't let me.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Ladies Please Sit Down

My right knee had pretty much failed me by the time I turned 26. Kneeling, crouching and doing basically that required me to hold my weight with bent knees was impossible. This wasn't much of a problem in public restrooms because nobody told me until relatively late in life that women don't sit down in public restrooms. Somehow in my life as a fully functional, normal female nobody had ever mentioned that I was supposed to hover over the seat, rather than to just sit and relax. When I went into the ladies room to find the seat splattered with urine, I was constantly stumped as to how it got there. Did it splash when it flushed? Did a guy go in there and forget to put the seat up? I was physically incapable of peeing unless I was sitting, I had no choice but to wipe down the seat and go about my business.

Then when I was in my 20's I went to Europe where for some insane reason they don't put seats on the toilets. Even in an upscale restaurant or cafe, the ladies room can range from a hole in the ground to a cold, narrow-rimmed toilet with no seat. It's not like the seats were ripped off. They just decided to save the $20 per toilet or whatever it would cost and they were never installed. I was complaining to my girlfriends at work about it and they looked at me like I was crazy.

"What difference does it make? Nobody sits down on them."

What?

"They don't?"

I stopped short of asking why. I wasn't that shocked that woman didn't want to sit down, I was more shocked that I didn't figure out how I had gone 26 years without this piece of seemingly common knowledge. How many times had I stumbled into the ladies room at some bar with my girlfriends and not noticed that I was the only one that actually sat on the seat. I also learned that day that women not only don't sit down in public restrooms, but they generally don't poop in them unless there is some kind of gastro-intestinal emergency. I had no idea that my bathroom etiquette was so drastically different from my peers. Sitting? Pooping? No problem! When you gotta go, you gotta go!

This leads me to wonder what exactly are they afraid of? Unless you're going to the bathroom featured in Trainspotting, they are actually quite clean. Public restrooms have undergone tons of germ analysis over the years, and it turns out that your average toilet seat is pretty clean and the sink faucet is germ infested. Pee is actually sterile. Nobody has ever caught a disease from a toilet seat that I've heard of. I understand a certain ick factor, but we live in a culture where a daily shower is fairly common. Is it really worth the discomfort?

The only reasons public ladies rooms are icky is because the ladies pee all over the seat. The crouching CAUSES the problem that it is intended to solve. So, if we all just sat down public restrooms would be less gross. Or at least could they put the seat up if they are going to crouch?

About Me

My name is Margaret, but people that knew me before 1988 usually call me Meg. I grew up in The People's Republic of Cambridge and I used to live next door in Somerville. (Which is much cooler than Cambridge these days despite a conspicuous lack of public green-space). I graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1992, and to this day I have mixed feelings about that. I I'm married to a fabulously handsome and kind man and I have 2 really neat kids. We also have 2 cats and live in a Victorian in Melrose with a huge porch. I consider myself the luckiest person in the world most of the time. I have a lot of love and stability in my life. It may be unearned, but it is reciprocated and appreciated.